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In commemoration of World AIDS DayRising Voices will be hosting a live chat. This chat aims to build on the foundations laid by the first chat we had back in April which asked the following question: “How can citizen media be used to supplement and improve the mainstream media’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic?”

This weeks chat will start out focusing on two Rising Voices grantee projects, REPACTED in Nakuru, Kenya and AIDS Rights Congo based in Brazzaville. We will learn how both organizations have implemented blogging and video outreach programs to spread awareness about their initiatives in AIDS prevention and advocating for the rights of HIV-positive individuals.

Other discussion topics include: What are the factors to weigh when HIV-positive bloggers go public about their status? How can blogging support networks form online? What about online forums? What are other new media tools, such as mapping mashups, that can be used effectively?

If there are other topics that you would like to discuss during the chat, please respond with your ideas. I hope that as many of you as possible can make it.

As a primer to the conversation I encourage you all to take a look at a recent post written by Juliana RincÃ³n on Global Voices about AIDS awareness through video. Especially fascinating is a video podcast produced by QAFBeijing, which interviews South African grand justice Edwin Cameron, the country’s only government official who has gone public about his HIV status.

I will be sending out a reminder email on Tuesday with a link to a video of a fascinating conversation among the members of the Breaking the Silence in Kwa Mashu project about the fear of discussing HIV status in their community.

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What is Kelele?
Kelele is an annual African bloggersâ€™ conference held in a different African city each year and run by an organising committee in that city. Kelele will be held for the first time in August 2009 in Nairobi, Kenya.

Why Kelele?
Kelele is the Kiswahili word for noise. We are organising a gathering of African bloggers in the tradition of historical African societies where everyone has a voice. Where society has room for debate and discussion. With too many voices marginalised or simply ignored in Africa society today for a variety of reasons we believe that technology in general and grassroots media tools such as blogs in particular represent the most powerful way in which to give Africans back their voice. We are gathering in Nairobi in August 2009 to make a powerful, positive, inspirational noise that will be heard across the continent and beyond. KELELE!

The theme of Kelele â€™09 Nairobi is Beat Your Drum â€“ we want to connect the traditional Africa method of getting your message across vast distances â€“ the talking drums â€“ to the 21st century and the tools we use today to get our message across, blogs and the Internet. We anticipate that this conference will continue to be called Kelele wherever it is held. For example Kelele Nairobi â€™09, Kelele Accra â€™10, Kelele Cairo â€™11 and so on.

When will Kelele â€™09 Nairobi take place?
August 2009. We have tentatively booked the 13th â€“ 16th August 2009.

Here is a summary of the proposed programme:
Day 1 August 13: Arrival in Nairobi and official opening
Day 2 August 14: Conference Day
Day 3 August 15: Skills/Training Day and Outreach Day. Official closing
Day 4 August 16: Sight seeing / departure

Sister events
The African Bloggers Awards, which aims to recognise the top blogger from each African country. The winner from each country will be invited and sponsored to attend Kelele â€™09 Nairobi.

Budget
Every successful event needs the backing of some great sponsors! Weâ€™d like to invite all organizations with an interest in blogging, Africa and citizen media to become a sponsor of the inaugural African Bloggers Conference: Kelele!

There are a variety of ways that you can become involved as a sponsor for Kelele – your contribution doesnâ€™t only need to be financial in nature. If youâ€™d like to find out more about the sponsorship opportunities, please email daudi.were AT gmail.com

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To celebrate the end of another week and to herald the beginning of the weekend, a bunch of Kenyan bloggers/blog readers/blog enthusiast/secret bloggers/potential bloggers/relatives of bloggers will be meeting at Alpenhofs, next to Prestige Plaza on Ngong Road at 6pm TODAY Friday 3rd October. Nothing formal, no agenda, just catching up to find out what people have been up to, making new connections any excuse to spread some good blog karma. It looks like some very interesting people are going to be coming and so should you. Really. You have no excuse no to come. Spread the word.

This afternoon, I am talking part in and helping host a Rising Voices chat on the HIV/AIDS and Citizen Media, to which you are all invited. The main chat host is Serina (Kipepeo Nyeusi). Rising Voices is the outreach arm of Global Voices. Rising Voices aims to extend the benefits and reach of citizen media by connecting online media activists around the world and supporting their best ideas.

Recently Kenya has made big strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS for example in 2006 the estimated adult HIV prevalence rate was 5.!% down from a peak of 9% in 1997/1998. The number of annual deaths from HIV/AIDS in Kenya has dropped from a peak of 120,000 in 2003 to 85,000 in 2006. ART programmes have averted about 57,000 deaths since 2001.
However the still much to do and 85,000 people is a lot of people.

(Figures from National HIV Prevalence in Kenya written by The National Aids Control Council and STD Control Programme. Nairobi, Kenya June 2007.)

What can we as bloggers/readers of blogs/generators and users of citizen media do to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS? As they saying goes, we may not all be infected but we are all affected. Please note the examples I give are from Kenya as that is the country I know best, but this chat is open to everybody and I see from the Rising Voices email list that some of our brothers and sisters in Latin America will be joining us which is brilliant. This chat is open to all!
Please join us today at: 14.00 GMT for our online chat.

At the end of January I attended a media forum organised by Internews Network. The forum was for the media to examine the way local and international media covered the post election violence. A self-assessment session. It was a fascinating way to spend a morning. The room was filled with hacks. Newspaper journalists, TV reporters, radio presenters, from the broad spectrum of media houses in Kenya. The big national broadcasters, the vernacular radio stations, the religious radio stations, and yes even the bloggers. I was invited to attend and to speak as a blogger and I gave a presentation on the way the blogosphere had covered the election and the post election violence.

In a session towards the end of the forum the discussion moved on to what we all could have done better in terms of our coverage. One statement that stood out for me was a comment that a lot of the reporting of the violence by Kenyan reporters/bloggers read like it was done by strangers. Kenyan reporters/bloggers were writing about things in their own country like strangers. For example, we all talked about Rift Valley militias like they are some kind of abstract phenomenon. Who are these militias? Who is funding them? Where do they live? What were the doing the day before the election? What do they call themselves? What are the names of the members? As Kenyans journalists they felt that these are the things they should have covered from the beginning.

The same applies to the victims. We always complain about how Africans are reduced to statistics. Remember when Al Qaeda bombed the US Embassy in Nairobi and western media reports named the foreigners who died and left out the Kenyans, or when flight KQ507 went down and we heard international media reports which named a list of nationalities and ended with “the rest were Africans”? Well here we are in the middle of the greatest crisis our country has ever faced and we couldn’t even name our own victims.

A few reporters spoke out against this criticism. One reporter said that as a Kikuyu woman she would have to be mad to approach the family of a victim of “stray” police bullet to ask his name as the public felt the police were working to protect the Kikuyu, and would have to be completely bananas to try and interview members of any Rift Valley militia who were busy running around rounding up Kikuyus. Valid points perhaps but they were quickly knocked down. After all, the moderator remarked, as professional reporters you must have more than one way to find information. Just because you can not approach the family directly is no excuse not to be able to identify the victim of violence or to do a story on the identities behind the militias.

A couple of people raised another concern, that it was completely unrealistic for us to think that it is possible to name all or even most of those victims of violence. They felt that it was nice in theory but in reality it was unworkable. An Indian journalist who has been based in Kenya for the last few years as a foreigner correspondent told us about the example of Calcutta.

After riots in Calcutta left over 3000 people dead one of the newspapers, I think it was the Calcutta Daily Telegraph, launched a project to name each of those victims and it succeeded. 3000 people and they wrote all their stories. If they can, we can too.

It is unacceptable that people, our people, remain numbers. It is unacceptable that as Kenyans we can feel comfortable in the continuing anonymity of the ultimate victims of the post election violence. And let us be honest, we are cowards if we continue in this way.

It takes guts to look death in the face, to find out whom this person was, where they worked, where they went to school, to hold their children, to speak to their partners. To find out what their dreams were. It takes guts but it is necessary.

Take the example of James Odhiambo:

James is 24 years old.

James is the sole breadwinner for his family.

James works at a petrol station as an attendant.

One of his colleagues at the petrol station is called Brian Oluoch.

James was killed in Lurambi at the junction on the way to Shikoti, Kakamega in Western province, Kenya.

According to eyewitnesses he was shot by the GSU.

The police were unable to pick James’ body, as they did not have enough fuel for their vehicle.

James Odhiambo was buried on Sunday 13th January 2008.

James was buried in Homa Bay, Nyanza province.

Brian and other friends from the area travelled to Homa Bay to comfort the family.

If you would like to help the family directly you can contact Brian on +254.724.912.015

The national media declined to run James’ story so how do I know about it? I know because Mr.Michael Arunga, who works for World Vision in Darfur, was on holiday in the area at the time and took pictures, which he allowed Afromusing to post on her flickr account. Afromusing then wrote a blog post with all the information above she put on her personal blog and on Ushahidi.

In one blog post of 399 words James went from being just another number. James went from being just another dead body in the “over 1000 causalities” of the post election violence in Kenya to being James. Afromusing’s post is disturbing and saddening. It is also powerful and necessary. Afromusing’s blogpost and Michaelâ€™s pictures humanised the death of a young man, personalised it, and made it real and relevant.

This is why the Ushahidi project is so relevant and so necessary. We as Kenyans are guilty of having short-term memories. Yesterday’s villains are today’s heroes. We sweep bad news and difficult decisions under the carpet; we do not confront the issues in our society and get shocked when the country erupts as it did two months ago. Ushahidi gives everybody, anybody, the opportunity to get his or her experience recorded. Through SMS, through email, through the internet, through meeting an NGO worker who will write down what happened and share it with us. Ushahidi is a project that has to be owned by those who use it; they have to believe in it. They have to trust it; they have to feel a part of it. Ushahidi is not the end but the beginning. We have the information, we share it, and people will run with it. Hopefully we will get the stories behind the numbers. Just as with James we can inject a little humanity back into the lives of these people who were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The project is recording not just incidents of deaths, but of all the violence. The project is not recording just the negative stories but highlighting the doves who are working for peace in our communities as well. And the project needs all your help to survive. Ushahidi needs your help, needs your votes. Please vote for this project on the Netsquared challenge. You can find full details on how to do this here. After you vote, please get involved by submitting your experiences and those of the people around you to the database. Instructions on how to register to vote are here and here.